Plagiarism and the Internet
In the days before computers research had to be done solely in books, articles, or on personal interviews. It was not so easy to attain an abundance of valuable information so quickly. Now children are taught from early ages to utilize the computer and the Internet. Searching school topics on web browsers is common knowledge for today¦Ðs youth.
But with this breakthrough technology also comes consequences and rising disputes. Is the information that Internet-users are finding valid sources? What legal restrictions does one have in using those sources? Are the sources themselves legal? Students ¡cutting¡ material from a variety of different sites and ¡pasting¡ them into a word document as if it were their own work has become a common practice among high school and college students. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, seventy-five percent of students admit to committing ¡academic dishonesty¡, however only twenty-five percent of students from the same populous consider ¡cutting and pasting¡ to be the only serious form of cheating (Southard 2).
A national survey conducted by Education Week estimated that fifty-four percent of students admitted to plagiarizing information from the Internet (Plagiarism.org 1). At the University of California-Berkley officials have stated that there was an averaged seven hundred and forty-four percent increase in cheating between the years of 1993 to 1997 (Plagiarism Statistics ¡ Did You Know??? 1). Perhaps one of the reasons for this drastic increase of cheating is the easiness in which one can find the documents that they plagiarize. Popular websites such as ¡www.schoolsucks.com¡ and ¡www.a1-termpapers.com¡ provide immoral and slacking students with hundreds of prefabricated essays (Plagiarism, Ethics & the WWW 2), equipped with word count and grade received.
Another possible reason for the increase in plagiarized schoolwork is the nation growing decline in ethics. The Callup Organization in 2000 published a list of the top problems facing the United States. The number one problem was education, followed by decreasing ethics. These two rankings perhaps aided in the creation of some of the other listed problems below, such as poverty, drugs, crime, and racism (Plagiarism.
It is a random Thursday night on the first floor of Brewster Hall and the Campus of State University when a frazzled young girl wanders into the room of a fellow student inquiring about The Stranger by Albert Camus. She needs to have a three page paper completed by tomorrow and cannot find a kick start on the essay writing process. Since her peers are on the level of the common doormat concerning Camus, she was left without any further help. However, had she just typed “the stranger, camus” into Google, three of the first ten sites listed would have directed her to either free or paid essay sites.
The better educated you are, the better off you are socially, and economically. Having a degree is, in general, a good indicator of your level of education. To get it some students study very hard. Others, on the contrary, prefer to take some shortcuts that seem to be easier for them. Those, not so much interested in acquiring a solid education, simply want to plagiarize to pass their classes, to get that degree. Plagiarism spreads out through any level of our education system. It even extends beyond that limit to reach almost any aspect of our society. With the internet revolution, this problem becomes more acute. “The web has provided global access to an unfathomable cornucopia of term papers, essays, and other scholarly works, right there out in the open for purchase or outright theft” (Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015, p. 160). This paper will discuss the different types of plagiarism. Before getting deeper into that discussion, we will start by explaining the word plagiarism.
New York Times journalist, Trip Gabriel, puts into perspective students ability to use their creativity throughout their academic career in “Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age.” This article discusses issues of plagiarism in the digital age, especially through college students. There are different perspectives from various people either attending college or professors that argue why plagiarism occurs. Whether it’s because of laziness, unpreparedness going into college, originality, or authorship not taken into consideration. Overall, this article infers the different standpoints of plagiarism, demonstrating the ease the digital age gives students to plagiarize, and the importance
In the technological world we live in, where we’re only a click away from accessing the web, with billions and billions of searches to our question, plagiarizing has become easier than before. Plagiarism is the act of taking other people 's work and ideas without giving them credit. This can include any form of cheating. Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in the Digital Age, written by Trip Gabriel explores the misunderstanding of plagiarism by students. It also provide anecdotes and reasons given by different people to why students plagiarize without necessarily choosing a stand. Interestingly, it have been found that students still plagiarize knowing that it is wrong, which contradicts the idea that students misunderstand authorship. Authorship
When times get rough and tough it seems like most students do turn to the internet for a little extra "help". In Cybercheats it clearly shows how students use certain websites to get free or even pay for important papers and essays. As technology gets more advanced it appears that some people actually get lazier. Plagiarism plays a very important and major part in this article. It is clear that if caught plagiarizing you can be suspended, expelled, and/or receive an F on your assignment. For most students though it is worth the risk. Plagiarism is an act of cheating. Plagiarism is cheating.
Many students today find it easy to plagiarize in order to fill up pages, and hand a paper in on time. “A national survey published in Education Week found that 54% of students admitted to plagiarizing from the Internet” (“Plagiarism.org”). While this may seem like a good idea to some, the grade is not worth the consequences. When students plagiarize, they no longer read or sort the material; they are simply printing out someone else’s work. Those students are basically going through the motions of learning. Another danger of plagiarizing is that you may be using false information from the Web. Students who thoroughly research and sort the information are helping themselves. Evaluating the information and drawing their own conclusions improves the student academically and intellectually.
I have also learned that the number of kids that plagiarize has increased by 31 percent from 1999 to 2001. The book states that the CAI (The Center for Academic Integrity) found three out of four kids admitted to cheating on a test when interviewed in 2002.
Plagiarism is a severe problem because it has since become an epidemic and is being practiced at an alarmingly increasing rate. It has become widely accepted among students at many colleges and universities across the United States. It has gotten to the point that many students don’t even consider it cheating. This fact alone makes it even more serious and harder to control. It is now common practice to obtain someone else’s writing and turn it in as an original work. It is not difficult to purchase a pre-written paper or hire another individual to write a paper. Students are willing to pay whatever the cost so that they don’t have to do the work themselves. In fact, paper-selling services such as this have become quite a lucrative business. With the age of technology quickly advancing it has become all the more easily to plagiarize.
One thing is certain; plagiarism is on the rise. With the rise of technology and the age of information upon us it is easier than ever to pull ideas from every corner of the world and every epoch of our species. Confucious is only a click away and Van Gogh is in reach of a Google search. No more time consuming trips to the local library, head scratching at the Dewie Decimal System. An iPad and a few minutes of time takes the place of a full time research team. Sometimes however, the temptation might become too much and an overloaded student may decide to save some time and use a segment here and there from the words of another. Access to material such as this is certainly easier to obtain than ever before and students claim to do it anonymously for a variety of reasons. Some feel overburdened and need a break while others feel they cannot compete with the quality of work they see online and feel the need to plagiarise. Many others however claim that most of the time the plagiarism is not intentional at all.
Many students are using technology to cheat because they are able to find answers quickly online by just searching for them. Cheating is increasing in the United States at higher rates because many of the students in high school or in college have to deal with different responsibilities, pressure, and loads of different types of work. Richard Perez Peña states in “Studies Find More Students Cheating,” “Internet access has made cheating easier, enabling students to connect instantly with answers, friends to consult and works to plagiarize.” Plagiarism, which means using a work of someone else as if it were yours, is the most common form of cheating in high school and in college. Plagiarism occurs by not citing a source correctly or by not putting the proper quotation marks on a quote that you borrow to state your point. Some students don’t even know what plagiarism is, and they do it using the technology that we have today. Therefore, Julie Rasicot states, “High schools and teachers should make clear what constitutes plagiarism, how to avoid it and what the consequences will be if students are caught.” If students are not informed about plagiarism, then they tend to use technology as an easy way to do an assignment, which prevents them from learning. On the other hand, many professors have argued that the technology is developing
Plagiarism, or the unaccredited use of another's work or ideas, has become more and more of a problem in recent times than it was in the past. According to statistics found in a survey conducted by the Free Press, 58% of high school students let someone copy their work in 1969, but by 1989 this number had risen to 97%. The expansion of the World Wide Web and the number of people accessing the Web on a regular basis has caused an epidemic of plagiarism in this country, especially among students. This is a serious problem that must be addressed because many students feel that if they are not getting in trouble for cheating, than it is okay.
Cheating in the classroom has been happening since the first schoolhouse was built; however, it has more than doubled in the last decade due to the emergence of new technologies that give students high tech alternatives to looking at their classmate's paper. "A 2002 survey by the Josephson Institute of Ethics of 12,000 high-school students found that 74 % of students had cheated on an exam at least once in the previous year. According to Donald McCabe, who conducted the Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, study, the Internet is partly to blame. The Internet makes plagiarism very simple. In-class cheating has also gone high technology. Experts say students who cheat are not just scribbling tiny crib sheets anymore. They are using their cell phones to instant message questions and answers or storing notes on their graphing calculators." ("Eye on Cheaters," 2004)
Academic dishonesty, specifically cheating and plagiarism, recently has increased in popularity. Students often justify unethical academic behavior. Technological innovations, like the cellular telephone, have provided students with new methods of cheating. Plagiarism has also been influenced through technologies, specifically internet companies have emerged that provide unethical solutions to academic assignments.
One aspect of the creative industry that has remained the same throughout generations is the difficulty for artists to inject their work into popular culture. Utopian Plagiarism, Hypertextuality, and Electronic Cultural Production by Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) written in 1991 argues that “The Video revolution failed for two reasons – a lack of access and an absence of desire” (99) while artists from the documentary Press. Pause. Play. point out how easy access is to creative technology. The artists from PPP point out that it is much more difficult for good work to breakthrough into popular culture because there is so much of it. Comparing the arguments by CAE with the ideas in PPP reveals that artists breaking through into popular culture has always been difficult, but it is difficult today for different reasons than it used to be. For this reason, quality plagiarism is essential in the creative industry.
Cheating on an exam, though the most popular by far, is only one way to break an academic honesty code. Another way is through plagiarism. Starting as young as third grade, students are warned about the perils of plagiarism and how bad it can, a lesson that is refreshed at the beginning of every English course they take for the rest of their lives. As they get older and enter high school and college, many students chose to ignore these warnings and plagiarize their work anyways. Where does modern technology come into this? Well, the Internet, the most modern technological advancement yet, plays the biggest role in plagiarism. There are thousands of sites where students are able to purchase, some even offer them for free, an essay about any topic they choose. Those students then simply write their name at the top and turn in the essay as if it was their own work. Essay writing has never been easier. Some students are sneaky though; they take sections from multiple different sources then simply compile them together to create a single essay. According to a study done by McCabe, "41% of college students […] admitted to cutting and pasting material from the Internet without citation" (Dehn 190). Before the invention of the Internet, plagiarism to that extent would have been